It's often said that any character can die in Game of Thrones. But is that
actually true? The narrative demands that two stay alive, says Michael Deacon

Perhaps the most disturbing moment to date in Game of Thrones – which returned on Monday on Sky Atlantic – came in series two, when Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) proudly showed off the blackened corpses of two small boys. This was disturbing not merely because he’d burnt them. It was disturbing because of how we, the viewers, were supposed to respond. The corpses, it was confirmed in the next episode, didn’t belong to the boys Theon pretended they did. He claimed to have burnt Bran and Rickon, youngest sons of the late Eddard Stark. In fact, Bran and Rickon were still alive; Theon had instead burnt a couple of orphans from a farm.

In other words: we were meant to feel relieved. Only a couple of orphans! Thank goodness! We’d never met them anyway! Who was going to miss them?

If we did feel shock, it wasn’t overwhelming, because this was what we’d come to expect: awful things happen in Game of Thrones every week. Evil is so routine as to be almost mundane. There aren’t many points of comparison between George RR Martin’smonstrous fantasy and the nature poems of Ted Hughes, but there is this one: both describe a world in which morality is irrelevant. Each creature kills or is killed. That’s just how it is.

Now in its fourth series, Game of Thrones has passed beyond summary. There are too many strands to bring a novice up to speed. If you haven’t seen it before, and want to know what happened last week, buy the DVDs and watch from the start.

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I don’t mean that to sound like a chore. It isn’t. For all its vulgarity and bombast, Game of Thrones is magnificent. It’s loved even by people who otherwise cringe at fantasy. Women love Game of Thrones at least as much as teenage boys do. Now Breaking Bad is over, it’s the most stressfully gripping drama on TV.

It’s often said this is because no character is safe, however major: anyone can die. Actually this isn’t quite true. At least two characters can’t die, or not till the end. One is Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), the pixie-faced “mother of dragons”. Throughout GoT, she’s been leading a quest to reach and conquer the continent inhabited by all the other major characters. If she were to be killed before getting there, her entire storyline would be rendered pointless. For narrative reasons, she has to survive. As a result, her storyline lacks jeopardy, and is the least interesting part of the show.

Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister

The second character who can’t die yet is Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), the drawlingly cynical imp with the voice (and height) of Martin Amis. Tyrion can’t die because GoT would miss him too badly; deceitful and genuine, cunning and kind, he’s perhaps its only truly rounded character. He’s the story’s soul. Plus he’s the only character with a sense of humour, or at least a sense of humour that extends beyond guffawing at other people’s misery. (Most of the comic relief in Game of Thrones comes from moments of unwittingly ridiculous dialogue. For example this, from Rory McCann’s brutal “Hound”, in what was meant to be a moment of high tension: “If any more words come pouring out your c--- mouth, I’m going to eat every f---ing chicken in this room.”)

At its heart, if heart is the word, Game of Thrones is about how power corrupts not just the powerful but the powerless. The powerful act cruelly both because they can, and because they have to; if they don’t, someone crueller will rob them of power. The powerless, meanwhile, act cruelly to impress or appease the powerful. Neither has a choice. All men must kill, even heroes – or those who in GoT pass for such.